Not etch-a-sketch
Finally found something halfway worth saying about the alleged "political campaign" between the two Goldman Sachs brands.

Vulture Romney is going around behind Obama, making two completely contradictory points.

(1) I'll do everything Obama does.

(2) Everything Obama does is wrong.

It's most obvious with Obama's national implementation of Romney's Massachusetts medical plan. Vulture claims that he will repeal his own plan. Well? Are you saying your own ideas are bad? In that case why should we elect a man with bad ideas?

He's doing it again with student loans. Offering to continue the existing plan, and simultaneously saying the plan is bad.

Most politicians use slogans that imply they're offering something new.

Vulture's motto is Same Deal. "Elect me! I'll keep doing all these horrible things that you hate! But when I do them you'll love them, because these horrible things will be infused with my patented unique Magick Republican Faerie Dust!"

Of course the vast majority of shit that comes out of Vulture's mouth isn't even analyzable; it's just a random selection of content-free Repooflican platitudes.

Etch-a-sketch was an obsolete metaphor. More modern: Vulture is an MP3 player with an erasable playlist. His handlers have loaded him with a selection of short quotes from Rush and Hannity, and set him to Shuffle.



= = = = =


By contrast, Obama's basic slogan is valid if incomplete. "Osama is dead and GM is alive." Those are unquestionable accomplishments, and unquestionable contrasts. Gandhian Hippie Traitor Bush had two chances to kill the Sheikh and treasonously decided not to pull the trigger; Obama had one chance to kill the Sheikh and pulled the trigger. Vulture Romney wanted to kill GM, and Obama kept it alive.

The slogan skips one big bad thing Obama did: The abovementioned Romney medical care program. It also skips one crucially important and vitally necessary thing that Obama failed to do: Permanently shut down the stock exchange and shoot all speculators.

But slogans are meant to emphasize the positive, and Obama has some real positives.

= = = = =

4/30 update: Here he goes again. Obama has already sent a special emissary to China to protest about their imprisoning an anti-abortion activist, even while we continue to prosecute anti-abortion activists here. Now Vulture complains that we should be doing something.

Romney waded into Washington's diplomatic dilemma with China by urging Barack Obama to protect the blind civil rights activist who is believed to have sought sanctuary in the US embassy.

"Our country must play a strong role in urging reform in China and supporting those fighting for the freedoms we enjoy," Romney said in a statement.

According to friends and overseas human rights groups, Chen is now under US diplomatic protection.

Well, Vulture, what would you do instead? Send a special emissary? Protect the anti-abortion activist in our embassy?

Note also the monstrous irony of the media calling Chen a "civil rights activist". If he dared to protest against The Supreme Sacrament Of Abortion here, he'd be described by the same media as a "vicious evil extreme-extreme-far-far-far-ultra-ultra-ultra-right-wingnut Nazi Fascist terrorist, who needs to be tortured and slaughtered instantly."

Location, location, location, I guess.
  ¶ 5:01 AM

  More proof that Vulture is just plain dumb
Still more proof that Vulture Romney is fantastically stupid. He hires a fag as a major campaign adviser. Understandable enough given the bubble Vulture lives in. Among supercool superrich superstatus dickheads, it's damn hard to find anyone who isn't an assrammer or carpetmuncher. Sodomy and status are synonymous in modern America.

The stupid part: Vulture doesn't understand how the system works. Repooflican fags are always blackmailed by Democrat fags. Look at what happened to Joe McCarthy. Look at what happened to Larry Craig.

Vulture got lucky this time. The blackmail started early, so his assistant fag (who seems to have vastly more sense and honor than Vulture!) had to get out early.
  ¶ 4:06 AM

  GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
Last month I wrote a tribute to C.R. Anthony's, a good department store that supplied most of my household needs when I was starting adult life in 1971. I discovered why Anthony's was such a good store: It was founded and operated on closed-loop principles. All of the stock was owned by store managers, who thus had a personal interest in the success of their own stores and the chain. It was the direct opposite of modern New-York-based capitalism. When I was writing that piece, I couldn't find a definite indication of why Anthony's died; I just assumed that a middle-class store couldn't survive in today's Gilded Age class setup.

Now an article by David Stockman fills in the details. Anthony's was failing for those basic reasons, but it was KILLED BY VULTURE ROMNEY. Turns out that Anthony's was Vulture Romney's first blood. His novice kill. His practice shot.

In the spring of 1997, when Chairman Greenspan decided that “irrational exuberance” was not such a worrisome thing, Bain Capital decided to indulge, too. It caused Stage Stores Inc.—which was already publicly traded—to raise $300 million of new junk bonds and used the proceeds to buy a faltering 250-store chain of family clothing stores called C.R. Anthony.

Within five months of this ostensibly “transformative” deal and long before the results of the ritual “synergies” and “rebranding” could be determined, the company’s stock price had doubled. Bain Capital and its partner, Goldman Sachs, quickly unloaded their shares at the aforementioned 18X gain.

... As a matter of plain fact, the “transformative” C.R. Anthony deal was a bull-market scam. Almost immediately, results headed south. After growing 4 percent during the year of Bain’s quick 1997 exit, same-store sales turned to a negative 3 percent in 1998 and negative 7 percent in 1999, and were still falling when Stage Stores Inc. filed for bankruptcy shortly thereafter. The company hemorrhaged $150 million of negative cash flow during 1998-99 — that is, during the two years after Bain and Goldman got out of Dodge City.

I already have plenty of indirect and impersonal reasons to hate Vulture Romney. He profanes the name of capitalism, claiming to be the champion of a system that he has helped to destroy. He represents the Numbers Man, the Turnaround Man, the Butcher. Romney-type Numbers Men ruined several businesses where I worked. They stole the natural culture of the business, stole the soul, to make a quick profit.

Now it's personal. C.R. Anthony's was the only store I ever liked. It was a business with a soul. Vulture Romney killed it.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

We need to STOP and ask one basic question:



Vulture's answer to that question is simple. "We have an economy so that I can destroy thousands of lives to gain billions and billions and billions of dollars in my Cayman Island bank account." Obama's answer to that question is slightly more complicated: "We have an economy so that people like Mitt Romney can destroy thousands of lives to gain billions and billions and billions of dollars in their Cayman Island bank accounts."

There is a better answer, and there was a time when even economists understood the better answer!

Better answer: We have an economy to provide decent stuff that ordinary people can use, and to provide decent jobs that ordinary people can do. Anthony's was a shining example of that answer, and Vulture killed it.

Labels: Make or break, Natural law = Sharia law, the broken circle

  ¶ 3:24 AM

  Big chief is at it again
Big Chief Bathes-in-data is showing yet again that he doesn't understand anything at all.

Mr Romney brought up an incident at the weekend when his wife's aircraft was forced to make an emergency landing. He mused that she would have coped better if she was able to breathe outside air during the fire. "I appreciate the fact that she is on the ground, safe and sound. And I don't think she knows just how worried some of us were," Mr Romney said, according to the LA Times. "When you have a fire in an aircraft, there's no place to go, exactly, there's no – and you can't find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the windows don't open. I don't know why they don't do that. It's a real problem. So it's very dangerous."

Most well-informed people do know "why they don't do that." At typical jetliner flying height, the atmospheric pressure is about 20% of normal. The inside of the plane is pressurized to near normal. That's why a blast of air carries passengers out through the hole when the windows or outer walls break. And if you were still inside after that moment of horror, you couldn't breathe the extremely thin air and you'd freeze instantly.

However, the "experts" are hardly better:

Experts pointed out that opening a window would provide oxygen to fuel the fire and a loss of cabin pressure that could rip the fusilage apart.

Sort of correct on the latter part. It's not the loss of pressure that rips the "fusilage", it's the momentary blast of air through the hole that rips the panels near the hole. But completely wrong on the former. In a house fire at ground level, breaking a window does let in air, because the fire has used up the oxygen. The internal pressure is slightly less than the outside. That couldn't happen on the plane, precisely because the inside pressure is so much higher. A few seconds after the break, the high-pressure air would be gone, leaving the interior air just as sparse as the exterior. Sparse super-cold air would give less support to combustion, and the fire would actually extinguish faster than in the pressurized cabin.

= = = = =

The real problem with Vulture is not his ignorance of basic natural facts. An executive doesn't need to know specific facts about science or foreign policy or anything. CEOs are delegators above all.

No, the real problem is that he doesn't know where he's ignorant. Any competent adult knows his own skills and limits, knows which parts of reality he can talk about and which parts he should remain silent about. Vulture clearly doesn't have that basic human equipment. He is not a competent adult.

Later: There's a nice audio example of the same phenomenon. People who have a realistic sense of their own abilities don't sing in public unless they're good. Compare Vulture singing 'America the Beautiful' with Obama singing an Al Green song. Vulture doesn't realize how awful he sounds, presumably because nobody has ever dared to tell him. Obama is good at singing and knows it.
  ¶ 4:52 AM

  Is Vulture just plain stone stupid?
Vulture Romney has never shown great signs of intelligence. Despite his claim to "bathe in data", he participated in the Carbon Crime. Anyone who actually knows how to find data and analyze information can see through that scam in 30 seconds.

Now I'm wondering if he has any IQ at all. In a feeble attempt to counter Obama's true and terse slogan "Osama is dead, GM is alive",

Romney pushed back Monday, saying "of course" he would have made the same decision.

"Even Jimmy Carter would have given that order," Romney said.

Maybe.

But we don't need hypotheticals about Carter. We have a FACT about Bush. Gandhian Hippie Traitor Bush DIDN'T GIVE THAT ORDER. He had two chances that we know of, two instances when the CIA had Osama lined up for a shot or a bomb, and Gandhian Hippie Traitor Bush decided to let the Sheikh escape. Twice.

Does Romney know that? Or does he condescendingly believe Americans don't remember it? The loyal R-bots don't remember anything, but Vulture doesn't need to convince them. They will mechanically vote R. A campaign speech is supposed to persuade the unpersuaded, not re-persuade the automatons.
  ¶ 5:02 PM

  Unprepared
When your beliefs are somewhat outside the chalk lines of the usual idiotic corrupt game, you've got to be ready for the arena. Rand Paul clearly didn't do his homework, didn't get advice from someone like David Horowitz. When he walked into the arena with the Gramscian vultures, they ripped his liver out.

In this specific case, the way to prepare is to arm yourself with facts. When a Commie bulldyke vulture like Blitzer or Maddow starts skrawking about civil rights, hand it a laptop with the set of facts highlighted, and ask it to read the facts out loud. Sit back with your arms crossed and give it a choice of dead air or saying the facts in its own voice. Don't say anything more, don't answer any other questions, until the bulldyke vulture reads the facts out loud. The bulldyke vulture will most likely end the interview rather than read facts, since facts are Kryptonite to Commies. This will also be a win for you.

And what facts? A history of all the specific anti-discrimination laws and what happened to each "protected class" after the law. Show that the laws have never improved the lot of the "protected class", and in most cases have made their situation worse. This was, of course, the sole intended purpose of those laws. Stalin's greatest invention.

Even better for TV, include a set of timelines showing the economic progress of blacks, women, disabled people, etc. Then ask the Commie interviewer to point out the year when the relevant law was passed. The law's passage never marks the start of progress. Sometimes it's an indistinguishable location in a smooth upward curve that began long before the law; sometimes it starts a period of decline.

It's an easy case to make on a factual basis, but you can't say it in your own voice. You have to present it as neutral facts, with an invitation to look up the sources.
  ¶ 4:56 AM

  Already knew that.....
I try not to pay attention to the idiotic partisan back-and-forth, but sometimes it breaks through. Vulture Romney says:

"You've heard no one stand up and say that people are better off than they were four years ago. They really can't say that."

Well, I'm better off. As I noted yesterday, I've been pulling out of a stupid tailspin since 2008.

More relevant to the partisan stuff, I'm better off monetarily. This comes mostly from my own planning and frugality over many years. There's only one partial connection to the world of DC/NY politics and finance: I would have been even more better off** if Romney's Jew Mafia buddies hadn't stolen the interest from my bonds and savings.

Clearly then, I'm not people by Vulture Romney's logic.

No people are better off.
I'm better off.
Therefore I'm not people.

But then I already knew that. I'm not a Jew, so I'm just a loser, a taker, a moocher. A negative externality. Disposable, expendable. Not people.

Fuck off, you monstrous thief. I'll go with the "side" that respects ordinary people, even though both "sides" are equally murderous in empirical terms.

= = = = =

**Yeah, it's supposedly "bad grammar." Nope. Better isn't really an adjective in that sentence; rather, be-better-off is a three-word verb.
  ¶ 5:10 AM

  Oren Cass GETS IT.
This long interview with Oren Cass is remarkable. Cass is the only resident of the think-tank world who UNDERSTANDS REALITY COMPLETELY.

Especially salient considering where Cass came from. He worked at Bain Capital, then worked for the Vulture Romney campaign in 2012. Now he's abandoning the whole vulture line and adopting the Natural Law line, the Makeforce line.

I won't quote the good parts, because almost everything is AMAZINGLY GOOD and BEYOND CORRECT. I'll just mark the one small exception. In the question about automation, Cass misses the fact that offshoring is more important than automation as a source of job destruction. Offshoring is actually a counterforce to automation, a return to semi-slavery. When a factory moves to China or India, it uses LOWER tech than it used in USA, because labor is so much cheaper.

Labels: Natural law = Soviet law, Old Economy Steve, skill-estate

  ¶ 3:34 AM

  GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR 2
Vulture in last night's TV show: "Well of course they add up. I was someone who ran businesses for 25 years, and balanced the budget."

No, Vulture. No. No. No. No. Exactly not.** Precisely not. Diametrically not. Your way of running a business into the ground was the exact opposite of "balancing the budget". You ran Bain by borrowing and betting, not by balancing. Leverage and debt were your tools, your dynamite, your wrecking ball.

Admittedly your background is perfect preparation for running post-1989 America. It puts you directly in line with the Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama way of doing things.

GODDAMNIT ALL TO FUCKING HELL. WE DESERVE BETTER. JUST FUCKING ONCE WE DESERVE A FUCKING PRESIDENT WHO DOES NOT SERVE FUCKING GOLDMAN.

= = = = =

** Footnote: 'Exactly not' is undoubtedly a strange phrase, but it's been stuck in my head since college. German 101 was taught by Fräulein Dey, who came from Germany and had a typical rigid Kraut temperament. Whenever a hapless American mispronounced a word or misused a Weak Adjectival Declension, Fräulein Dey would shout: "No! No! No! Exssoctly not! Chust not!" I suspect she was internally translating "Nein! Nein! Nein! Ganz nicht! Gar nicht!"
  ¶ 4:17 AM

  Misteromney's Neighborhood FINAL.
As far as I can tell, nobody ever read my previous Vulture Romney cartoons. Exactly zero views. Nevertheless, the sequence needs to be completed. Authorial integrity or something.

Here goes:



Bye, Vulture. Good fucking riddance. It hasn't been fun knowing you.
  ¶ 5:31 AM

  Big chief
Vulture Romney is still playing games.

"I did go back and look at my taxes and over the past ten years I never paid less than 13 per cent. I think the most recent year is 13.6 or something like that. So, I've paid taxes ever single year, Harry Reid's charge is totally false."

Okay, Big Chief Bathes-in-data. Nobody seriously believed Harry, but we don't believe you either. You're supposed to be the Numbers Man, Big Chief Bathes-in-data. You fired thousands of Americans, hired thousands of Chinamen, and ruined thousands of lives, to increment the bottom-line variable of your paycheck. You stole lives that had real value to increase your own numerical "value".

Now you give us a free-floating number, and you don't even tell us what the number means. Is this 13% the rate you pay on the adjusted gross? Or is it effective tax, which is the only meaningful number? (Effective tax = the check you wrote to IRS divided by the total amount you made.)

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =



Me Little Chief Bathes-in-data. Me do number also. Me workum heap new Iron Brain Machine, use many number. Me get wampum same like you, from publisher royalty. Me pay tax same like you, with check to Great White Tax Man instead withholdum.

Me poor man, you heap heap heap rich man. You no show 1040. Me show 1040. Now you do same, or you heap big liar.



Okay, enough Tonto talk. This is the bottom-line part of my 2010 tax form, which is somewhat above my average for the last ten years. The effective tax is 4239/21579, or 19.6%. That's more than the 13% you claim to pay.

Put up or shut up, vulture-ass.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Dead serious for a moment: The real problem is that Romney is NOT a numbers man. He showed repeatedly and consistently in 2008 and 2012 that he does NOT understand numbers or science or economics or business or foreign policy or much of anything. He's an empty mannequin, a jerky marionette, a wind-up doll reciting a random mix of prerecorded slogans clipped from Rush and Hannity. When he has to make a spot decision, the prerecorded response is always "I'll have to consult my advisors on that."
  ¶ 4:54 PM

  Most destabilizing
Trying to pay no attention to the fake "election" shit, but sometimes it gets too annoying to avoid.

Vulture Romney says: "Iran is the world's most destabilizing power."

Wrong in too many ways to count, but I'll try.


1. Ideally, stability shouldn't be an important variable. A powerful nation should serve the interests of its OWN PEOPLE. Sometimes the best actions lead to stability and sometimes the opposite. It's a side effect, not a goal.

2. Nevertheless, from 1861 to 1980, from Mass-Murdering Madman Lincoln through Helpless Imbecile Carter, stability was a main goal of American foreign policy. We consistently helped brutal tyrants and smashed all efforts toward self-determination. (In Lincoln's case, of course, the brutal tyrant was Lincoln himself; nevertheless, he established the rule that everyone else followed.)

3. Reagan broke the rule and took the pragmatic view. When he collapsed the Soviet Empire, he destabilized the world; but Reagan properly saw that as a side effect.

4. After Reagan, all presidents have specifically worked to destabilize the world even more. Since 1990, America is unquestionably the "world's most destabilizing power." Nobody comes close. Bush The Father destab'd Iraq. Clinton destab'd Yugoslavia. Bush The Son destab'd Afghanistan and Iraq (again). Obama is destab'ing Libya, Syria, Egypt, Tunisia and Persia. But we do NOT destabilize Yemen or Bahrain or Saudi, because our Israeli and Saudi bosses tell us not to.

5. Persia has done some destab'ing in the past, notably Lebanon in the '80s. They were happy to watch us remove Saddam in 2003, and probably steered us toward that goal. (Remember Ahmed Chalabi?) But in the current situation, Persia is SPECIFICALLY SUPPORTING THE STABLE DICTATORS. The same dictators that we were supporting (much more effectively) back in the pre-Reagan days when we sought stability first.


Good lord, this Romney idiot can't even keep up with his own party's fast-developing idiocy. He's stuck in the Carter era and doesn't even know it.

(FWIW I don't see any problem with his comments about the London Olympics. Simple truth, and his experience gives him the authority to speak on that subject. Pretty much the only time Vulture has made sense.)
  ¶ 4:56 PM

  Might as well chime in
Nobody reads this, but just between me and the computer, I might as well stab one more fork in this stale turkey, since everyone else is doing it.

If Repooflicans really want to recapture a meaningful majority, they should stop playing demographic games, stop pandering to Mexicans and blacks and Jews. Stop appealing to people who will NEVER vote R under any conditions. Instead, appeal to a group that wants to be represented by a party on your side; a group that is currently unrepresented.

First, purge Norquist and get rid of the tax-evading ethic. Normal Americans see tax evasion as a form of low-grade treason. If you're unwilling to support the country financially, you're not entitled to crow about your exceptional and God-given moral superiority. Jesus ordered you to pay your taxes. Obey him.

Second, get rid of Soviet Agent Alyssa Rosenbaum (alias Ayn Rand) and all of her strange acolytes. Agent Rosenbaum wanted to destroy America, and you've helped her do it. Stop the Taker/Maker crap. It's poison.

Third, listen closely to Jennings Bryan:

We say to you that you have made the definition of a business man too limited in its application. The man who is employed for wages is as much a business man as his employer; the attorney in a country town is as much a business man as the corporation counsel in a great metropolis; the merchant at the cross-roads store is as much a business man as the merchant of New York; the farmer who goes forth in the morning and toils all day, who begins in spring and toils all summer, and who by the application of brain and muscle to the natural resources of the country creates wealth, is as much a business man as the man who goes upon the Board of Trade and bets upon the price of grain; the miners who go down a thousand feet into the earth, or climb two thousand feet upon the cliffs, and bring forth from their hiding places the precious metals to be poured into the channels of trade are as much business men as the few financial magnates who, in a back room, corner the money of the world. We come to speak of this broader class of business men.

It is for these that we speak. We do not come as aggressors. Our war is not a war of conquest; we are fighting in the defense of our homes, our families, and posterity. We have petitioned, and our petitions have been scorned; we have entreated, and our entreaties have been disregarded; we have begged, and they have mocked when our calamity came. We beg no longer; we entreat no more; we petition no more. We defy them!

When you understand fully and correctly what Bryan meant, and when you act on his meaning, then you'll be a proper opposition party.

= = = = =

Of course the Repoofs have to get beyond a more obvious and basic stupidity before they can try to provide a meaningful agenda. In this election, raw political calculation said Obama's weak points were jobs and health care. A conservative opposition party would counter those weak points with a governor who had created jobs in his state, and had taken conservative steps to improve health care. In other words, Rick Perry. Instead, the Repoofs nominated Vulture Romney. He spent most of his life shipping jobs to China, and he specifically and personally invented the health care plan that Obama implemented. You simply could not imagine a more perfectly and diametrically wrong candidate. Not in a thousand years. If you looked hard for the WORST POSSIBLE candidate against Obama, you'd instantly find Vulture Romney.
  ¶ 6:07 AM

  Vulture as bully ... not news
Not a bit surprised to hear that Vulture Romney, who enjoys tearing companies apart and forcing their employees into poverty, had a sadistic streak as a youngster.

One thing strikes me as interesting. In the parts of the world and culture where I grew up, homosexuality was basically a non-concept in 1965. We knew who was 'that way', and it just didn't matter. No big deal, because the males who were 'that way' didn't make it a big deal. Unlike now, they didn't force their preferences on the rest of us via TV, newspapers, Facebook, etc.

There was plenty of bullying and teasing, but it was purely about position in hierarchy. If A was higher than B, A teased B. Normal part of growing up for any social mammal. B had to learn how to deal with it, either by rising in the hierarchy or by finding positive elements in life outside the bullying situation.

It appears that Romney's world was different. In his super-rich super-liberal Yankee boarding school, sexual orientation was a big deal, and it was a major part of the bullying relationship.

= = = = =

Parallel to what I'd noticed before about male/female hierarchy. In "unenlightened redneck yahoo" Oklahoma in 1965, women and men filled pretty much the same roles. Frontier tradition. Women fixed cars, owned businesses, and moved around freely, without losing their female appearance and style. They didn't turn into swaggering crewcut monsters. No big deal.

When I moved to Penn State in 1986, I saw a very different world. In that "enlightened progressive" part of the world, women stayed home and expected to be sheltered and supported; and the most Progressive male PSU faculty members openly expressed a bizarre sort of contempt toward women. Those tenured Commies, while forcing everyone else to conform to their egalitarian dictates, made it clear that they didn't think women should be working anywhere near them.
  ¶ 8:13 AM

  Asymmetry
Mother Jones and NPR are all weeweed up about a clandestine tape of Vulture Romney supposedly saying secret things to a private conference.

Secret? Hardly. He's just quoting the Maker/Taker shit which has been the primary topic of all Repooflican yappers for the last few years. Each talker has his own variant on the theme, but they all follow the same vicious Randian line, and the conclusion is always the same. Billionaire gangsters are Makers. They create jobs in China. All others are Losers, Moochers, Takers. Therefore billionaire gangsters must receive all money and power in the world, while Losers must die. It's that simple.

Through this campaign Vulture Romney has been exclusively outputting random Repooflican talking points, and he's doing the same in this video. He's simply running a mixtape of Rush, Hannity, Doyle, Savage, Levin, Miller, et al. Nothing remotely new, nothing remotely secret or hidden.

= = = = =

The only odd thing is that the Commie talkers (Mother Jones and NPR) don't realize this is standard boilerplate. They genuinely think it's unusual stuff, and they're eager to get it out so people will see what Romney's saying.

Asymmetry as always. American Commies live in a bubble, paying no attention to the other side. Non-commies pay attention to both sides.

By itself this asymmetry should be an advantage to the non-commie side, because superior knowledge is an advantage in any conflict. But the non-commie side has destroyed its advantage by sticking with the Randian bullies, sticking with the gangsters, telling ordinary people to die. We may be losers, but when one side tells us to "Take one for the team" and the other side doesn't, we'll probably go with the side that doesn't explicitly tell us to die.
  ¶ 5:50 PM

  Harry Reid gets it right!
Strong words from a man who normally goes along with all forms of idiocy.

"I think they should be ashamed; I think they should take the uniforms, pile them up and burn them, and start over. If they have to wear nothing but a singlet, with USA hand-painted on it, that's what they should wear. We have people in the textile industry who are desperate for jobs."

Singlet is a peculiar antique word for t-shirt, but Reid is still right.

It appears that Vulture Romney's management of the 2002 Olympics left the games with a lasting tradition of Chinese outsourcing.

Vulture himself declined to comment on his tradition, falling back into his normal brainless "Have to ask my lawyers about that" mode.

This particular outsourcing is especially egregious because athletic clothing is the only type of apparel that's still made in America in any quantity!
  ¶ 3:27 AM

  Nonsensical saying
ZH features a dispute, or fake dispute, about Trump's intentions to appoint Vulture Romney as SecState.

Some of the unskeptical Trump fans are praising this move, quoting the tired old "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer."

Nonsense. When your enemies are close they can shiv you, or pull internal strings to ruin your plans.

If you are important enough to have serious enemies, the only correct rule is "Keep your friends close and your enemies in the graveyard."

Clintons have been following this rule for 40 years and it has worked well. Successful leaders always keep their enemies under tight control if not dead.

HIGHLY RELEVANT example: Obama made the mistake of keeping Hillary close, appointing her as SecState. (Sounds familiar.) Hillary ruined Obama's intentions of slowing down Permawar. She continued Bush's wars and added four new wars. Finally in 2012, perhaps using Hillary's stroke as a justification, Obama was able to get rid of Hillary and appoint the more compliant Kerry. After that, decreased tension with Persia and Cuba, and no new wars.

A more sophisticated solution: Identify possible enemies. Make them useful and secure, not cornered and desperate. FDR was the ultimate expert in this approach. He saw revolutionaries growing strong on Left and Right, so he solved the problems that the revolutionaries were pointing out. (This process is also called Sanity or Responding To Negative Feedback or Life.)
  ¶ 9:44 AM

  Goldman LOVES you, fuckheads.
Occupy, the ultimate Useful Idiot, the ultimate Tool, the best friend of the Wall Street Mafia.

What does Occupy want in general?

As with last year’s May Day rallies, the demands for change are broad-based, covering immigration, a living wage, the environment, Wall Street’s continuing unbridled greed, the corporate theft of elections, and the growing wealth and income gap in America and around the world.

= = = = =

Let's look at the parts.

Living wage: A real problem. The real solution is absolute isolation. Eliminate imported laborers, eliminate outsourced labor, eliminate offshore operations, shoot the financial sector. We have to make it PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE to make money without USING AMERICAN LABOR. All of this is wildly obvious.

Well then, what is Occupy's "solution"? MORE IMMIGRATION!

Organizers of Wednesdays' May Day march hope the focus turns back to reforming the nation's immigration laws. For the past decade, immigrant rights advocates have used the march to push for reform, but the number of people marching has steadily declined since the mid-2000's...

Affordable housing: A real problem, but the solution is not in housing as such. The correct solution is the same as the first problem. If you want more housing, you need to distribute the JOBS more widely. You need MANUFACTURING in lots of different cities across America, as it was before 1980. You do NOT want more housing subsidies, because subsidies breed high prices and hoarding.

So what's the solution offered by "neighborhood activists"?

Neighborhood activists are urging Seattle to adopt a moratorium on new micro-apartment buildings. On Capitol Hill, older homes are being razed to build the new units that will bring an influx of residents who may rent for only a few months, developing few ties to the neighborhood, argued Carl Winter, who formed the group Reasonable Density Seattle to lobby the city for more regulations governing the developments.

Got it, fuckhead. "We don't want none of your kind in this neighborhood, boy. Don't let the sun set on your poor ass."

The environment: A real problem in China and India, NOT a real problem here. In fact we've "solved" this problem waaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy beyond the point of negative returns. Energy is a real problem everywhere. So what does Occupy want?

They want to end nuclear power, the ONLY power source that produces zero real pollution and zero fraudulent so-called "Carbon Pollution." They want to end natural gas power, which is the cleanest fossil fuel. They want all power to come from solar and wind, which means COAL. Coal is so dirty that advanced countries were moving away from it long before any pollution laws were passed. And of course they want carbon taxes and carbon cap-n-trade arrangements. Direct result: More offshoring, less manufacturing, more money poured into the financial sector and devoted to fraud and crime.

Education: A real problem. We've focused all our effort and subsidies on useless college degrees in completely false brain-destroying abstract subjects. We've severely neglected technical and practical training at all levels.

And what does Occupy want?

More subsidies to make useless degrees even more expensive! No standardized tests for public schools. (In other words, they want to eliminate Teddy Kennedy's school reform because it was rebranded by Bush Junior.)

= = = = =

Good work, Friends of 'Diamond Jim' Dimon. Good work, Friends of Ben 'Bugsy' Bernanke. Good work, Friends of Hank 'Shotgun' Paulson. Good work, Friends of Mitt 'Vulture' Romney.

You're guaranteeing maximum fucking profit for every fucking bubble Goldman ever created. Housing, commodities, education, biofuels, carbon offsets. Everything that starves the poor and enriches the rich. You're for it all.



Jesus H. Fucking Christ. WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU? CAN'T YOU FUCKING SEE WHERE YOUR FUCKING LEADERS ARE TAKING YOU?

Labels: Natural law = Sharia law

  ¶ 5:28 AM

  Tomatoes, knives, stores....


I've been tracking my recent shift from centralized processed food to fresh, with some dubious analogies along the way. Might as well continue the tracking and the analogies....

The last time I got serious with food was 1970, when I set up housekeeping on my own. I started with some leftover furniture from parents, and bought a few things as well.

One thing I bought was this little serrated knife:


It came from C.R. Anthony's, a regional department store chain. Anthony's occupied a category that doesn't exist any more. It was a step above the dimestores like TG&Y, and several steps below the hoity-toity fashion stores like S & Q Clothiers. If you wanted clothes that you could wear to school or work, or you wanted pans and knives and gadgets for a regular kitchen, Anthony's had it. In short, it was a middle class store. We don't need that category any more because we don't have a middle class.

Here's a typical Anthony's store around 1960.

Why was Anthony's such a good store? Why did it have exactly what an ordinary Okie needed, and why was it a comfortable place even for a man who hates shopping? This might explain it:

The chain grew by ... using profits from one outlet to finance another. Each manager trained the next and held a one-third partnership in his store. The thirty-three that opened between 1922 and 1926 had sales of $2.5 million in 1926. That year, the C. R. Anthony Company incorporated, and in 1934 it converted to a common stock operation offering shares only to individuals associated with the operation. Deeming those who owned the business to care the most about its welfare, the company avoided outside capital until its late history. The firm saw growth during the Great Depression, a testimonial to its ability to meet the needs of rural clientele and earning it the slogan as the "friendliest store in town."

Closing the loop. Feedback and subsidiarity. Giving local managers authority and motivation, paying no attention to New York. That's why it was a good store.

= = = = =

My little serrated knife didn't get much opportunity to work on food, as I quickly switched to frozen vegetables then ate in restaurants for many years. It moved into my car toolbox and served more prosaic purposes like cutting rubber fuel lines and fan belts. After I came to Spokane, I stopped driving and working on cars, so the knife migrated to the kitchen tool drawer where it cut cardboard and plastic for twenty years.

Thus it was ready and waiting when I returned to food preparation. At first I thought about buying a non-serrated knife and a cutting board As Seen On TV, but then I got sensible and used this knife and a saucer. After consulting the web, it turns out that a serrated knife and a saucer are pretty much the right tools after all.

Thanks to C.R. Anthony for a good product, a knife that endured 40 years of misuse and was still ready when its proper job finally arrived!

= = = = =

Followup here. It turns out that Anthony's didn't just die. It was personally killed by Vulture Romney. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

Labels: Heimatkunde, the broken circle

  ¶ 6:29 AM

  Hand of Providence
I try hard to view Vulture Romney as an evil genius, but I'm coming to the conclusion that he's just really really really really dumb. Probably an IQ of 85 or so.

The "hand of Providence" accounts for Jewish success????

Listen, Mitt, you're supposed to be Christian at least by culture. Jesus told the Jews that their standard behavior was NOT in accord with the Hand of Providence, and he illustrated a new way of following God. That was pretty much his whole point.

Modern Jews have continued behaving in the same ways that Jesus accurately observed. (Still stiff-necked after all these years.) Instead of a moral code, Jews have a MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE-al code. This approach to life unquestionably leads to material success, just as a shark's approach to life leads to eating lots of fish.

If you claim to be a Christian or a Mormon or a Muslim or just about anything other than a Jew, you should be pointing out that infinite wealth and infinite power are SPECIFICALLY NOT the marks of God's grace. Humility, generosity and contentment are more in line with God's purposes.

Obviously Mitt doesn't care about Christianity or God's grace; obviously his own MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE-al code was learned from the Jews of Wall Street.
  ¶ 10:54 AM